


I'll Let the Past Remain Behind Me Now

by spoowriterfic



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26345710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoowriterfic/pseuds/spoowriterfic
Summary: Set just after 406 ends, Jeremy's awkward question leads Waverly to reflect on how she learned that Nicole isn't a great swimmer.(A.K.A. You didn't think I could let "she's not a strong swimmer" go, did you?)
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 10
Kudos: 199





	I'll Let the Past Remain Behind Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, dear. There was so much going on in 406, and so many little moments in the whole first half of season 4 that I'll probably end up exploring, but Waverly's haunted, quiet, "she's not a strong swimmer" just grabbed hold of me and didn't let go. The delivery of that line....
> 
> The title is from Jann Arden's "Never Give Up On Me." Once, long, long ago, I made a Xena & Gabrielle fanvid to this song that I'd forgotten about entirely until some quarantine-induced cleaning led me to an old iPod that still had the file on it.
> 
> Note: I would normally put a story frame in italics to separate it from the main narrative but there's a lot of frame at the end and it just looked awkward so I'm hoping it's obvious from the change in tense instead.

If asked, Waverly in no way would have been able to say how long she and Nicole knelt together in front of the fire, lost to their joy and lost in each other. It could have been minutes or hours…all that really mattered was that, even if just for a few moments, everything in their lives settled and felt…right.

Nicole’s eyes were shining with love and elation and unshed tears, and maybe a little relief. She was wholly present in the moment in a way she hadn’t been, really, ever since they came back to themselves on the stairs when the initial euphoria of their reunion had faded into the memories of those long eighteen months that had shadowed her eyes.

But, eventually, they became aware of the others milling about, waiting for them to come back to Earth, and Waverly bit her lip a little shyly as she helped Nicole, who was still unnervingly weak and shaky, back into the chair facing the fire, making sure to rewrap her in the blanket she’d wrapped around Waverly’s shoulders out of habit before.

“You should ask him,” Waverly whispered into her ear when she caught Nicole glancing over at Nedley. “He loves you, baby. He’ll say yes.”

There was a flicker of guilt in Nicole’s eyes that Waverly immediately set out to banish with a kiss that quickly turned more intense than she’d meant it to, causing an audible, joking groan from Wynonna. “Hey! There’s a kid here!”

“Oh, that ship sailed the other day in the kitchen,” Rachel muttered.

“Kitchen?”

“Yeah, you might wanna buy a new tablecloth.”

“Why?” Wynonna asked suspiciously, then she squawked in outrage as she put two and two together. “In the kitchen?!”

Waverly dissolved into giggles, curling up on Nicole’s lap. She glared at her playfully when she tried again to wrap the blanket around her. “Hey! You’re the one who’s half-frozen. Keep that thing on yourself!”

Nicole leaned closer and whispered, “You could get under here with me.”

Waverly was spared from coming up with an answer when Jeremy sidled up and said without preamble, “So, this might be a random question, but earlier you said Nicole isn’t a strong swimmer.” He glanced quizzically at Nicole and added, “Aren’t you, like, Ms. Outdoors?”

Waverly felt Nicole tense in her arms and, just as Nicole took a breath to speak, she cut her off and said, “Mountain climbing is about as far away from swimming as you can possibly get.” Waverly added a steely look that told Jeremy that she absolutely wasn’t going to say a single word more on the subject, and he nodded awkwardly before heading back to Nedley, dodging Rachel, who was still trying to wheedle a celebratory shot out of someone, on the way.

* * *

It’s Nicole who suggests the hike up to the waterfall. It’s in a secluded area, still in the Triangle but far enough from Purgatory that it feels like an adventure.

They don’t get enough of a chance to do this, but losing Alice has maybe made them all a bit desperate for a taste of…regular life, or at least as close as they will ever get, so when Nicole asks if she wants to spend a summer Saturday hiking up a mountain trail to a waterfall, Waverly is more than happy to take her up on it.

Waverly tries to focus on the beauty around her, but what’s really captivating is, well, Nicole.

And it’s not so much that she’s breathtakingly beautiful in her hiking gear as she bounds up the trail ahead of Waverly.

It’s that she’s freer than Waverly has seen her in a long, long while, as though being out here is somehow recharging her in a way Waverly hadn’t really been expecting.

The waterfall is, as Nicole promised, absolutely perfect. The water cascades down the rocks more like a burbling fountain, leaving the air smelling of wet stone and vegetation without any annoying mist clinging to their faces. And, what’s more, there’s a crack in the rocks above that lets in just the right amount of light to catch the water drops and bathe the area in rainbows.

Waverly would be happy to live here.

They set up their picnic on a little rise overlooking the small lake at the base of the waterfall, though they end up cuddling more than eating, just basking in the ability to relax without worrying about demons or Revenants or Wynonnas interrupting them.

“It’s so warm here,” Waverly says, tipping her head back to look at Nicole’s face, which is relaxed and dreamy-eyed.

“It’s a hot spring, I think.”

“You think? You’ve never gone swimming in the lake? It looks so pretty down there. And it must be nice and warm if there’s a hot spring.”

Something in Nicole’s face freezes, but her voice is calm as she says, “Well, I-I had my good camera with me when I found this place. Can’t get that wet.”

And Waverly, not quite sure what’s going on, backs off and rests her head against Nicole’s collarbone, pulling her arms tighter around her middle. After a moment, Nicole’s body softens against hers, and Waverly doesn’t think about swimming again for a couple of months.

* * *

It’s hard to exercise in the winter in Purgatory. The closest actual gym is two small towns over, halfway to the Big City, leaving most of the population no other choice than to use the gym at the local high school when the weather makes driving that far a risky proposition.

Nicole, Waverly has learned, would rather just go jogging on days like this, when driving is dicey but it’s not _so_ frigid that staying outside is dangerous, but she prefers swimming in the indoor pool at Purg High. It’s open to the public after school hours and on weekends and is even kept, at least somewhat, heated.

It’s a week after the massacre at Pussy Willows, and Nicole has been a little brittle and a bit withdrawn ever since. Waverly is a touch puzzled – how could Nicole have heard the name Bulshar before? – but mostly she’s worried. Nicole’s started to have nightmares, though she’s yet to mention anything about them, and she’s also begun to chew her lower lip in her sleep. Both problems are getting worse and worse and sooner or later, Waverly knows, they’ll have to talk about the nightmares at least.

They’ve planned a date night – nothing fancy, just dinner at the diner and a night at Nicole’s – but Waverly’s running late, so she texts Nicole and asks her to meet her at the pool.

There’s an unusually long delay before she gets a single word reply: “Sure.”

When Nicole comes into the pool room, her body language is all wrong. She’s wound tighter than Waverly’s ever seen, in fact, so she abandons any thought of finishing her laps and hops out of the water, stopping next to Nicole to give her a quick kiss on the cheek before she heads in to change.

But Waverly is nothing if not observant, and she _knows_ every inch of every bit of Nicole, every quirk of body language and every micro-expression, and she’s starting to form the beginnings of a theory.

Or at least a hypothesis.

She’s pretty sure Nicole Haught can’t swim.

* * *

She drops hints that she’s _pretty_ sure Nicole sees right through.

It only takes a couple, in fact, and by the time she asks, “Did you know Chrissy’s the one who taught me to swim?” Nicole sighs resignedly.

“Waverly.”

“I can teach you. I don’t mind.”

“It’s stupid,” Nicole says, frowning self-consciously. “It’s just…my parents were busy when I was a kid, and they never – ” She cuts herself off, scowling at herself.

“It’s not stupid,” Waverly says, reaching over and taking Nicole’s chilled hands in hers – and it’s then that she realizes she’s dealing with _way_ more than embarrassment. And she immediately backs off in the face of what seems to be a genuine phobia. “But we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“It’s just…I mean, I can dog paddle. I know how…not to drown. I had to, to graduate from the Academy. It’s just…that it – ”

“Okay,” Waverly says, reassuringly, pretending not to notice Nicole’s hands shaking in hers. “That’s okay. Not drowning is good.” She squeezes Nicole’s hands one last time, and lets the matter drop.

* * *

After Nicole finally tells her about the massacre, it all becomes clear.

No wonder Nicole trembles at even the thought of swimming.

It’s all tied up in her pain and resentment about her neglectful parents, who couldn’t be bothered to teach her to swim, and the trauma of the massacre she’d escaped from on a river she could have easily drowned in.

She can’t help but picture it, though she has to imagine what Nicole must have looked like at that age because she has no pictures of her younger self at all. A six-year-old girl, terrified and alone, huddling in a rickety, leaky old canoe, drifting down a river that will kill her as surely as Bondage Bob had killed her aunt and uncle if she makes even a single mistake and falls in.

No wonder – no _wonder_ – she had never waded in the lake by the waterfall.

* * *

Nicole won’t admit it aloud, but she treasures the picture of her younger self and Nedley that Wynonna had found. Waverly finds it flattened out and uncreased, as much as possible, in a tiny frame next to the picture of the two of them that she has on top of her bookcase.

It changes something.

The nightmares ease, a bit, now that she’s not bottling up _all_ of the memories and trauma.

And now Nicole sits next to the pool and waits as Waverly swims her laps.

She doesn’t ask and doesn’t push, but she’s not entirely surprised when one day she gets to the pool and finds Nicole determinedly dog paddling around the sides.

She doesn’t say anything; she just swims slowly next to the love of her life and quietly demonstrates how to do the butterfly stroke, which is the closest thing to her hesitant but determined dog-paddling.

Nicole will never be fully at ease in the water, but in the few weeks of relative peace they have between the Gnome Wife Incident and the Garden, she at least learns to swim down the center of the pool instead of by the edge.

And she finds the strength to joke that her favorite stroke that Waverly’s taught her is the breast stroke.

* * *

“What did Nedley say?” Waverly asked later that night, settling in bed next to Nicole, who was shivering slightly even under a Waverly-sized pile of blankets. She watched Nicole carefully for any signs that the question was unwanted or brought up painful memories of the eighteen months she had spent unknowingly trying to kill her mentor and father figure and was relieved to see only slightly disbelieving joy.

“He said yes. Just like you said he would.”

Waverly gently tugged on Nicole’s hair, pulling her closer to press a series of quick kisses against her jawline. “Lots of yesses tonight,” she whispered. “I like it.”

“Me too, Waves,” Nicole said, leaning into the caress. She suppressed another shiver, but Waverly was so attuned to her that she immediately piled on yet another blanket, this time wrapping it around them both, while she also cuddled even closer to Nicole than she had been.

At Nicole’s look, she grinned a little. “Skin-to-skin contact’s good for hypothermia.”

They lost themselves in each other’s eyes for a few long moments, then Waverly said, “I love you. I love saying ‘I love you.’”

She watched, a little concerned, as Nicole smiled through sudden tears. Sensing Waverly’s dismay, she shrugged. “It took a long time…but when I….” She sighed. “The day I lost hope…it was eighteen months, one week, and six days…. I remember thinking that I’d only ever hear you say that once.”

Waverly soothingly ran her fingers through Nicole’s hair. “Thank you for telling me that. I know it’s hard for you to talk about your eighteen months.” She used her thumb to brush away one quiet tear that escaped to trail down Nicole’s cheek. “And as for ‘I love you’…I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it to really believe me.”

“I do!” Nicole protested. “I even knew before you said it…but – ”

“I know you do. Just like I believed you all the times you told me you loved me. But there’s…a little broken part inside…that that just doesn’t reach.” She saw Nicole take a breath and cut her off. “It wasn’t something you broke, sweetie-pie. It was just there. And it…whispers…sometimes.”

That clearly hit a nerve; Nicole broke eye contact, looking away, as she tried to pull herself together.

But Waverly wasn’t done reassuring her. “That’s why I stopped you, you know. Before. Downstairs. That’s why I wanted to be the one. I wanted you to know that I’m all in, Nicole. I love you.” She pulled Nicole closer and kissed her. “I love you.” This time, she gently kissed away the tears rolling down Nicole’s cheeks. “I love you, and I’ll spend the rest of our lives telling you that, okay?”

“I love you too,” Nicole whispered. “And, Waves, I never – when I couldn’t talk about – it was never a ‘no,’ okay? I just – ”

“It was that little broken bit, wasn’t it?” Waverly said. “Telling you I wouldn’t want to.” Nicole nodded. “Baby, I know that voice. Like I said, that’s why I wanted it to be me.”

Nicole smiled the same little smile she had when Waverly had first interrupted her proposal; the one that said ‘I can’t believe this is real.’

They still had a thousand problems facing them, but now they’d face them fully together, and that made all the difference.

“Thank you for putting Jeremy off, by the way.”

Waverly laced their fingers together, pulling Nicole’s hand up to her lips and kissing it. “You’re welcome. But you know you don’t need to be embarrassed about that. No one’s good at everything.”

Nicole sighed. “I can’t help it. It’s such a – I mean, everyone learns to swim when they’re a kid.”

“I didn’t,” Waverly reminded her. “Chrissy taught me, remember? I think I was…maybe ten or eleven?” She kissed Nicole’s cheek again. “And it’s not like we all don’t know about lousy families.”

Nicole laughed shortly. “Fair enough,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

They lost themselves in each other for a long while after that. In a way, it felt like a second reunion as the barrier Nicole’s guilt had put between them dissolved as though it were never there.

They’d taken some good-natured kidding about proposal sex and, in fact, Wynonna had already made a show of preemptively camping out in the barn and Nedley had offered Chrissy’s old room to Rachel for the night.

Still, there was one thing Waverly wanted cleared up before they took full advantage of being alone in the house.

“For the record?” she said. “I understand why you had to do what you did, and I can even understand why you tried to protect me from it. But…Nicole…did it have to be drowning?”

Nicole shrugged with a sad smile. “There were no good choices, Waverly. And that was the only one that was either going to work or…not…in a way that would keep me from hurting you, or Wynonna, or any of our friends. If it didn’t work.”

“Yeah, I guess Demon Dog probably would’ve ended badly.” Waverly sighed. “Just….”

She saw Nicole’s eyes flicker and the guilt creep back in, and rushed to reassure her. “No, wait, baby, it’s…I understand. Being desperate like that. I do. Don’t forget, I betrayed Wynonna and rewrote reality for you. But…please…next time….” She frowned. “I mean, don’t have a next time, but if there is a next time…just tell me, okay?”

Nicole bit her lip, thinking. “You really would’ve wanted to see Jeremy drown me?”

The thought made her shudder. Seeing it at all would be bad enough, but seeing it knowing how scared of water Nicole really was? God. “Well, no. God, no. But I also hate the thought of you going through that alone and if it really was the only way….” She shrugged. “Then I would’ve wanted to hold your hand through it all. So you’d know I was with you.”

Nicole’s eyes softened. “Oh, baby. I wasn’t alone. You’re always with me, okay?”

“You better remember that, Nicole Rayleigh Haught. And speaking of which, you owe me for not using your whole name in front of Wynonna.”

At that, Nicole lost her haunted look and began to grin again. “Yeah, probably better not to give her any more ammunition. As it is, she’s gonna be giving me frog-related presents for the rest of my life, isn’t she?”

“Only if she can’t find barf-related ones,” Waverly said with a grin. “But in the summer,” she added, “maybe we can practice swimming some more. So there’s no more drowning. Okay?”

Nicole laughed. “Yes, ma’am.” She caressed Waverly’s cheek. “Now. I believe we have a ‘yes’ to celebrate.”

“Well,” Waverly murmured. “Guess Wynonna was right way back when. I really did pick the smart one.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure when I realized that Nicole probably doesn't have any pictures of herself as a child, but when I put together neglectful, disinterested parents and what sounds like a pretty firm estrangement, I realized that she probably *doesn't.* (Also, if you watch carefully, she's put LOTS of pictures of Waverly throughout the Homestead, which is all kinds of heartbreaking.)
> 
> Also, it's totally a random head canon, but my theory about all the landscape photos plastered all over her house is that they're all pictures she's taken, hence the line about her "good camera," which is how I refer to my SLR.
> 
> I based my theory about Purgatory using the high school gym on the small town of Utqiaġvik, Alaska (formerly Barrow). As a born-and-bred Southern California girl, I have no idea why I'm fascinated with this tiny Arctic town, but I am, and that's what they do there. I don't have any real sense for *how* tiny Purgatory is, but it seemed a reasonable thing to have happen.
> 
> And finally, apropos of nothing other than no one in my "real" life would appreciate this, but I've mentioned my younger brother (who has Down syndrome) in one other author's note, and I just have to share that his standard greeting to me is now either "You want me to frog-barf on her?" or "I told you to STAY IN THE FROG!" Heh.


End file.
